Rightside - A Polarized Public

No Postulation About Mother Earth Can Be Proven Without Further Studies

By Dave Parker

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It must be quite the experience to be a divorce lawyer. Day after day listening to two sides, each person convinced they’re right, thereby making the other wrong. If the climate change debate ever goes to court, those divorce lawyers will feel right at home.

As a former television meteorologist (I say former, but once you’ve been blamed for a wrong forecast, you forever wear the scarlet M), I have been asked frequently what I think about climate change. My answer is, “I have no idea,” which seems a far better answer than just making stuff up. But, many seem quite convinced that humans are killing Mother Earth, or, that we are not. Never mind that those postulations seem to be based on either what they’ve heard others say or something they wish to be true.

Let’s make sure we’re on the same page with one very important point; if the Earth is warming, and over the past 100 years it has, that does not necessarily mean your car’s tail pipe caused it. The climatological history of the planet is replete with warmings and coolings. So, we must ask, 1) Has the Earth warmed more quickly recently than any other time we can accurately measure, and, 2) Can we prove, beyond the methane from animal ﬂatulence, that humans caused the warming? The answers are mixed. We do know that the official weather record keeping era in the United States, dating back to the 1880s, is but a blip in the almost incomprehensible timeline of Earth. So, citing what temperatures are now compared to what they were mere decades ago is like comparing your weight gain from a minute ago. Also, it is beyond inane to state either that Hurricane Sandy is proof of global warming, or that a major snowstorm is proof of no global warming.